“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.”—Alasdair Gray.

“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders

It's a classic fishing expedition. Thought that was kind of illegal in the US; something to do with "probable cause".

Finished EC. What's disturbing about it is how much the conspiracy theorists are right; I've got Mike Ruppert in another window predicting the economic collapse that's starting now. Earlier it was Greg Palast pointing out that America hasn't had an honest Presidential election since 1996. Then there's the anecdotal evidence of serious, endemic police brutality and many Americans acceptance of it...

Chances are, as the people who put the UK in USUK, we're not going to be spared. You're right; this country is going down...

"Economists have successfully predicted 27 out of the last 3 market crashes..." as the saying goes.

There's a lot of real fake money floating around anyway :D and China and others do need to keep the West consuming in order to fund their own Keynesian projects and capitalist growth lest they end up with those huge workforces going hungry and indulging in a little bit of old-skool direct democracy.

But then there's plenty of other factors: the visible debt and instability could well only be the tip of a the iceberg; a crash could actually benefit a lot of those at the very top (nothing like a recession for engaging in a little bit of breadth accumulation and solidifying wavering power); oil price instability/rises could also provide a tipping point--the global economy needs cheap transport to get all those goods from the hyper-exploited labour to the consumer, oil is the other slave.

Wouldn't want to put money on it either way. Although if I did, I would probably use gold.

I'm not shocked to hear this would give folk across the pond pause about traveling, but as Charlie Stross pointed out fairly recently, one can clear customs (on the outbound leg) from at least one Irish airport.

I hope we'll see more of you on youtube if we're to see less of you in the States... the only clips of you speaking I could find had poor audio quality... still, I appreciate you've got finite time and attention.

(The end of Stone Canal had me up until 6 am to finish it... I was terrified you'd gut-punch us with a 'and then they all died horribly' ending, but I was very pleased with it. Best closing line ever, within context.)